*All of the information in the post below is publicly available and not classified*
Being a military chaplain has a lot of heavy moments. We walk beside Service Members in some difficult parts of life. In 5 years as an Army Reserve chaplain and 11 years as an Active Duty Navy chaplain, I’ve had the opportunity to support Service Members and their Families through casualty notifications, funerals, hospitalizations, divorce, grief, and moral failure.
But while there is a very heavy reality to ministry in the military, there are also some incredibly fun times – things I have been able to do that I would not have been able to do anywhere else.
So this is a fun post.
One of the most fun experiences I have had as a chaplain occurred years ago when I was the chaplain at Naval Air Station Meridian, an air base in Mississippi. I was stationed there for a few years and provided chaplain support for Training Wing One, one of the places we train strike jet pilots. Over the course of my time providing support for the Wing, I had dome casualty assistance calls and funerals/memorials for the command. As I was nearing the end of my tour at NAS Meridian, the Wing reached out and said, “Chaps, we’d like to take you in a jet ride as a way to say thanks for taking care of us.”
Um…would I like to fly in a Navy jet??? YES, PLEASE!
The jets used to train the strike pilots are T-45 Goshawks, a two seater jet. I was going to be the backseater and one of the pilot instructors would take me up for a training flight. The condition was that I had to go through an abbreviated safety course in order to fly. I was only too happy to oblige.
After going through the required training, which also included training and getting fitted by the parachute riggers, I was ready to fly. My pilot instructor was a young guy I had known for a while due to my work on the base and with the Wing. We were going up to do a training run with another instructor and a student pilot, one of the naval aviators in training.
The two jets took to the sky!
It was absolutely exhilarating. I got to watch firsthand as our sister jet ran through a series of maneuvers and procedures to demonstrate that the aviator in training was ready to earn his wings of gold. After the training exercise part of the flight was over, our companion took off to go land and debrief. That’s when my pilot decided to have a little fun. We flew around for a few minutes, pulled some tight turns, and saw the countryside from a vantage point I had never seen it.
It was about that time, though, that I broke into a cold sweat. The G-force of the jet was getting to me. Google will tell you that G-force is gravitational force, the measurement of acceleration felt as weight, expressed in multiples of Earth’s surface gravity. That’s sciency-type talk for saying the, what my pilot saw as normal playing around, was not sitting well with my land-lubber body!
On the radio he asked me, “Want to do some fun stuff and cut loose?”
I had to be honest, “I hate to be a spoilsport, but I’m about tapped out. I’m in a cold sweat back here!”
He laughed, “I’ll give it to you, Chaps, you didn’t puke or pass out. Way to go!” He flew us back home with a textbook perfect landing. It was the ride of my life.
What would you like to know about military chaplaincy? Drop us a comment or shoot us a message and we’ll do our best to address your question!
And if you would like to read more about chaplaincy and military ministry, check out the newest book from Linzey, Travis, and Linzey called Military Ministry: Chaplains in the Twenty-First Century available at Amazon and all book retailers or from the publisher Wipf & Stock.
Military Chaplain Guide 